


Of Butterflies and Ladybugs

by Kira_Gold



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Akumatized Marinette, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Non-Graphic Violence, Possible Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Gold/pseuds/Kira_Gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One thing Marinette knew for sure was that she, as a holder of a Ladybug miraculous, cannot be akumatized. Hawk Moth, however, had different thoughts on the matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Butterflies and Ladybugs

One thing Marinette knew for certain, because Tikki told her at least three times and because it made perfect sense — she can’t be akumatized. She is _Ladybug_ , goddammit, a holder of the Miraculous, a Paris superhero, a girl who knew how do people become vulnerable to Hawk Moth’s charms, so she would at least know to avoid purple butterflies if she was ever upset or angry. But now she just didn’t care about hiding or looking around, she was curled on the floor of the gym — no one should come in, and if they do, well, nothing could be worse than what happened — sobbing and muttering something indiscriminate under her breath. This time it wasn’t just Chloé she was angry at, although mayor’s daughter was the major reason — it was Alya, her best friend, mind you, _Alya_!

So, it all began in the morning, when Marinette ran into her classroom, fortunately, not yet late. Her friend waved at her and immediately started blabbering something about, well, the girl didn’t quite catch the topic, because she didn’t have enough sleep yesterday, trying to finish her biology powerpoint (which she was, by the way, meant to present today). Fortunately, the lesson began not a minute after and their teacher announced:

“Time for presentations! Miss Bourgeois, you go first.”

Ugh, of course Chloé was first, Marinette sighed. And she would’ve laughed at it with Alya, if the first slide of the powerpoint, which mayor’s daughter put up on big screen, wasn’t the exact copy of _hers_. “Okay,” she thought, “maybe that’s just a coincidence, after all I only finished mine yesterday”. Although with Chloé anything was possible. And indeed, the rest of the slides, the text, which Bourgeois read explicitly of the paper right in front of her, it all belonged to Marinette. Barely halfway through the presentation Dupain-Cheng raised her hand, but was given right to speak only when mayor’s daughter finished.

“Marinette?” the teacher inquired then, much to Chloé’s displeasure. 

“This is my presentation!” Marinette blurted out. “I made it! I even have it on a memory card over here!” 

“Oh _please_!” Bourgeois smirked. “Do you actually think I would use _your_ powerpoint, out of all people in the class? That is, if I needed to, which I didn’t?”

The girl, still sitting, frowned angrily and reached into her bad for her flash drive… Just to realise to her horror that it’s not there. Moreover, right now it was attached to the computer in front of the classroom — Marinette only noticed it then.

“That is mine, too!” she insisted, pointing to it. To her ironically extreme bad luck, the drive was new and had no other files apart from the presentation on it, so proving it was rather difficult. 

“Miss Bourgeois?” The teacher raised her eyebrows, looking at Chloé. “Is it actually?”

“Of course not!” mayor’s daughter hissed, almost making Marinette admire her acting skills. Almost. “Ask Sabrina, she was the one to make… uh-h, help me in making my presentation!” 

The redhead nodded vigorously. Teacher turned her head back to Dupain-Cheng. 

“I’m afraid, if you don’t have any other way to prove it, I’ll have to say you’re lying.”

The thing was, Marinette _didn’t_. If Chloé wouldn’t have been finished by now, she could have said what slide comes next or quoted the bit from the text later. The girl always deleted her schoolwork from her computer as soon as it was finished, a stupid habit which didn’t help. The flash drive was new. Only thing Marinette had left to do was to sit back down and cover her face in her hands. 

“Alya, can you believe it?” she growled quietly, as Bourgeois was answering questions and getting complimented by a teacher for good work. “Now my grade is gonna drop, and it is all because Chloé decided to use my powerpoint! And I’ll have to make another one! This one took long enough!”

“Well, to be fair, it’s not like I don’t believe you,” Alya replied, “but you texted me yesterday evening saying you’ve done nothing on the presentation because you were busy, and she was gushing about how she had it finished on Wednesday already, plus the flash drive doesn’t look like something you’d use!”

Yes, Marinette couldn’t stand the temptation and bought a Ladybug-coloured memory card. Now she was regretting the decision, or rather would be, if she weren’t this stunned by her best friend’s mistrust.

“I mean, you could’ve told Ms. Mendeleev you forgot to bring it, or even that you didn’t do it! Sure, it would have dropped your marks slightly, but at least you wouldn’t li—“

“I didn’t lie!” the girl shouted, jumping up suddenly. Everyone turned their heads to her. Chloé giggled. “Listen, think what you want, but I was the one to make this powerpoint and if you don’t believe me — that’s completely fine, but you’re wrong!”

Tears were rolling down her cheeks as she stormed out of the room, grabbing the memory card on the way. Alya, completely shocked, looked after her, also standing up. Bourgeois laughed even louder, as the teacher frowned. 

“Miss Césaire, sit down, please. Let’s stop the disruption of discipline.”

And this is how Marinette ended up in the gym, which was now empty, because everyone had lessons, and, fortunately, these lessons didn’t require the usage of this place. The girl couldn’t even explain, why was she this angry — it’s not like Chloé hasn’t done similar things before! Of course, other thing she was hurt about were Alya’s words, but Marinette felt like she wouldn’t have overreacted like that if she didn’t spend all night trying to make the powerpoint perfect, if she got enough sleep or if she didn’t have to battle akumas every single day last week. Seriously, _every. single. day,_ almost as if Hawk Moth went entirely mad, trying to steal their miraculouses! Speaking of which. Tikki was flying around, whispering something in her concerned-reassuring manner and trying to calm Marinette down. Didn’t help much — the girl continued sobbing, hiding her face and not even thinking of standing up from the cold floor. 

_And somewhere, far or not so far away, a man smirked, pressing a button and making a window open in front of him. His akumas felt another bit of anger, sadness, distress in someone else, and were ready to do their job._

_“Fly away, my evil little akuma!” Hawk Moth exclaimed, turning another pure white butterfly into a purple-winged clot of evil. Not waiting for another command, it flew up and away through the window frame. “This is going to be an excellent day for you.”_

Back in the hall, neither Tikki nor Marinette noticed the butterfly before it was a moment too late. At first, akuma considered getting inside the flash drive, which the girl was still clutching tightly, but then went straight for the earrings. When Marinette suddenly winced, her kwami at first frowned, not understanding what’s going on, and then covered her tiny mouth with a hand. 

“Oh no,” she whispered before hiding behind the nearest pillar. “No, no, no!”

Marinette sat up straight, skin around her eyes shining bright red and Hawk Moth’s mask appearing around the face. Inside her head, there was a voice, such a convincing, trustworthy and friendly voice, which Marinette needed to hear right now. 

“Hello, Themis. I’m Hawk Moth, and I am the one who will help you get revenge on that foolish girl. In exchange, I’ll need Chat Noir’s and Ladybug’s, no, _your_ miraculouses. Can you do that?”

“You bet,” she whispered in response, even the slightest wish to disobey him dying inside. “Hawk Moth.” 

Next moment she was from head to toe covered in black mist, and when it faded away, Tikki, who was watching from behind the pillar and shaking her head in terror, saw what probably was Ladybug’s new appearance. Long white dress with black smears all over it. Hair, tied into a high bun with a braid around it. Almost glowing grey skin. Bright blue lipstick, a dirty blindfold covering her eyes, a balance in one hand and a sword in another. 

“You’ll get my miraculous after I get Chat’s,” Mari… no, Themis smirked. Suddenly her body disappeared, only leaving a pulsating grey dot behind, which immediately flew towards the classroom. 

“Oh no,” Tikki repeated again and closed her eyes. “Plagg!” 

Yes, kwamis had their own way of communication. They were only allowed to use it for a thirty seconds once every time their holders changed, and it was never activated unless anything really, _really_ bad happened, but now was about time. 

“Heya!” red spirit heard inside her head. “Code A, Code D or did you just miss me?”

Plagg might have sounded light-minded, that’s how he always did, but Tikki knew him long enough to notice concentration and slight nervousness in his voice.

“When did I contact you because I missed you?” she sighed. 

“Well, three hundred years ago, when your—“ the black kwami started, but was interrupted. 

“No time for this now. Code A.”

“…Shit.” 

That pretty much summed up the situation. A hero getting akumatized wasn’t a common situation, but it happened from time to time, and it was… destructive. One time they failed to stop Chat Noir, who has been turned evil, immediately, and it resulted in an irreversible destruction of a city. Ladybug could do much more. 

“Yeah, pretty much. “Collège Françoise Dupont”, the gym. Now.”

“Wait, it is…”

She didn’t get to hear the rest of the sentence, since their thirty seconds were up. Tikki growled. Knowing the end of it would be useful, okay? “It is close from here”, or “It is in the other part of the city”, or… Well, now she only had to wait. Not much a kwami could do against an akumatised superhero. 

***

Back in the classroom Plagg climbed out of Adrien’s bag and tapped him on the leg to get his attention. 

“Plagg, it’s not the time,” the boy whispered. “My presentation is next, and if you say a thing about cheese…”

“It’s about Ladybug,” the kwami interrupted, immediately making Agreste look at him worriedly. 

“What happened?”

“The worst possible thing, and I’m not joking. She’s been akumatized.” 

“ _What?!_ ”

Everyone in the class now looked at Adrien, who jumped up from his seat, quickly shoved the biology textbook in his bag and hurried towards the door. Before he left the classroom, he turned to Ms. Mendeleev and smiled to her nervously. 

“I’m sorry, I got this text from Nathalie, it’s about my father, and I have to run. Can I do the presentation tomorrow?” 

“As long as you _do_ it, yes,” the teacher agreed and Adrien stormed out of the door, closing it behind them. When they were around five meters away from the classroom, he turned to Plagg. 

“What do you mean, she got akumatized?! I thought it’s impossible!”

“Unlikely, almost never happening, but not impossible,” black spirit corrected. “I talked to her kwami, and she wants to meet us in the gym of this school. For… some reason.” 

Agreste nodded and sprinted down the stairs, Plagg still slightly ahead of him. As soon as they were down in the sports hall, kwami called out:

“Tikki! You here?”

“How did you get here so…” ladybug spirit flew from behind the pillar where she was hiding and was about to say “fast”, but noticed Adrien following Plagg and froze in midair. “…Oh.” 

“What happened?” the boy asked sharply, looking at the kwami. “And, since there is not much point in hiding it now, who _is_ Ladybug?”

“Well you could guess it…” Tikki replied quietly. She was surprised, yes, that Adrien was Plagg’s chosen one, but also slightly annoyed that she never figured it out earlier. After all, it would make Mari’s life much easier. “She literally left your classroom minutes ago. And, oh yes, she did do the presentation herself. Just in case you were foolish enough to believe Chloé.”

“Marinette?!” Adrien exclaimed, realisation suddenly hitting him. “Of course, it would make so much sense, but I… never… And now, you say, she got akumatized?”

Plagg also seemed kind of surprised about this revelation. Usually he’d laugh at Agreste, now, however, wasn’t the time — the kwami acted unusually serious. 

“Tikki, can you explain him?”

“I thought you would!”

“When? In the time it took us to get downstairs from the classroom?”

“Okay, fair enough, but now you’re still perfectly capable of doing so yourself!” 

“I’m not good at explaining!”

“Well, neither am I!”

“What are you two talking about?” 

Adrien, who, apparently, was listening to their arguing, looked tired and irritated from the thought that he’ll have to fight his Lady — and knowing who she was even made the matter worse! Well, two kwamis were about to make everything so much harder. 

“Well, you see…” Tikki began, but immediately looked at Plagg for support. The black spirit sighed. 

“There weren’t a lot of times when heroes were akumatized,” he continued. “But one thing is certain — fighting them is much, _much_ harder then fighting regular akumas. They are usually so much stronger that you’ll have a really hard time. And, on top of that… Uh-h, Tikki…”

“Yes, yes. On top of that, you can’t really purify them as easily. There are two ways to get rid of their evil. One would be to break a thing the akuma is possessing — the miraculous, her earrings, that is — which will therefore result in her no longer being a Ladybug, and me, well, taking significantly more time to recover then always… So the world will have to go without Ladybug for around hundred years, and that can bring some… consequences… Plagg!” 

“So breaking the miraculous isn’t really an option,” the kwami nodded. “Like, at all, so we just told it to you so you _won’t_ do it. And then there is a second option, much easier to perform, and, honestly, pretty obvious, if I say so myself. So what we’re saying is basically, you’ll have to kill Marinette. Or, what is the name Hawk Moth gave her this time? 

“Themis…” Tikki whispered almost inaudibly. “As in, the goddess of justice…”

Adrien though ignored everything that went after “You’ll have to kill Marinette”, so red kwami’s explanation of the akuma’s name wasn’t all that necessary. The boy just stared at spirits with emptiness in his eyes, trying to process their words. It made so much sense it hurt — killing the source of evil, he will therefore make that evil disappear, but… 

“No!” he exhaled finally. “No, no, no! You can’t expect me… to…”

Plagg looked at him with sympathy, but shrugged. 

“That’s the only option, kid. I’m sorry, but I say it as it is.”

“He’s right,” Tikki, to whom Adrian turned in despair after hearing his own kwami, sighed. “Th-there was never anything else done about akumatized heroes, and I doubt there’s anything that could be.”

“But, but what if…” Adrian was frantically trying to come up with a suggestion — _any_ suggestion. “What if she herself will resist the evil, and then it’ll be forced to leave her, and…”

“Is this ever the way with akumas?” Plagg smiled sadly. Adrien had nothing to say in return, and so for a moment they were quiet, each one thinking something on their own. Agreste’s hands were shaking. The kwamis surely knew better about everything regarding heroes and their akumatizations, but if there is truly nothing he can do…

His thoughts were cut short by an explosion upstairs and loud yells. Adrien winced, then exhaled slowly, still not sure that he could — no, sure that he could not — kill his Lady, and whispered, not even wanting to perform his usual transformation sequence:

“Plagg, claws out.”

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably have two or three parts to it, I'm not sure. Hope you liked this chapter and will like the rest!


End file.
